Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

GCB
Portrait by George Frederic Watts
Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench
In office 24 June 1859 – 20 November 1880
Monarch	Queen Victoria
Preceded by	The Lord Campbell
Succeeded by	The Lord Coleridge Lord Chief Justice of England
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas
In office November 1856 – 24 June 1859
Monarch	Queen Victoria
Preceded by	Sir John Jervis
Succeeded by	Sir William Erle
Personal details
Born	Alexander James Edmund Cockburn (1802-12-24)24 December 1802 Altona, Brandenburg Kingdom of Prussia
Died	20 November 1880(1880-11-20) (aged 77) 40 Hertford Street, Mayfair, London United Kingdom
Resting place	Kensal Green Cemetery Brent, Greater London United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Spouse	Amelia (Emily) Godfrey (marriage not found)
Children	Louisa Charlotte Cockburn Alexander Dalton Cockburn
Alma mater	Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Occupation	Barrister, judge

Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 12th Baronet

In 1847, he decided to stand for parliament, and was elected unopposed as

Cockburn was born in Altona, in what is now Germany and was then part of Brandenburg,^[2][3] to Alexander Cockburn and his wife Yolande, daughter of René Michel de Vignier de La Saline, vicomte de Vignier,^[4] of Santo Domingo.^[1][5] His father served as British Consul to Hamburg and the Hanse towns and later as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Württemberg and the Republic of Colombia;^[6] he was the fourth son of Sir James Cockburn, 8th Baronet (born c.1729, died July 1804), his three elder brothers having succeeded to the baronetcy, but died without heirs.

He was initially educated largely abroad and became fluent in

• Trial of Dr Cockburn: In 1841 a charge of
  prohibition duly obtained against the ecclesiastical court, which had deprived Dr Cockburn of his office.^[1]
• Daniel McNaghten: Sir
  insanity defence based on the defendant's ability to distinguish "right from wrong" in favour of a broader approach based on causation.^[8][9] Cockburn displayed a mastery of the scientific evidence and was an innovator in exploiting forensic science in court.^[10]
• The winner of the 1844 Derby: In 1844, he appeared in Wood v. Peel to determine the winner of a bet (the
  Baron Alderson, demanded, and as a result Cockburn lost the case, while his strenuous advocacy of his client's cause had led him into making, in his opening speech, strictures on Lord George Bentinck's conduct in the case which should have been held back.^[11][12]
• Lieutenant Henry Hawkey: In 1846 Hawkey, an officer of the Royal Marines, was tried for murder at Winchester assizes after shooting James Alexander Seton in a duel; Cockburn secured Hawkey's acquittal. James Seton was the last British person to be killed in a duel in the United Kingdom.
• The Achilli trial: During the short administration of
  Lord Campbell found that Newman's plea of justification was not proved except in one particular, a verdict which, together with the methods of the judge and the conduct of the audience, attracted considerable comment.^[1]

Cockburn shepherded through Parliament the Common Law Procedure Act 1852[13] and the Common Law Procedure Act 1854.^[14]

• William Palmer: In his tenure as Attorney General from 1852 to 1856, he led for the crown in the trial of William Palmer of Rugeley in Staffordshire, an ex-medical man who poisoned a friend named Cook with strychnine in order to steal from his estate. Cockburn made an exhaustive study of the medical aspects of the case and won a conviction after a twelve-day trial, again demonstrating his skill with forensic science.^[1]
• The Hopwood will case (1855).^[1]
• The Swynfen will case (1856).^[1][15]

As judge (1856–1880)

In 1856, he became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He inherited the baronetcy in 1858. In 1859, Lord Campbell became Lord Chancellor, and Cockburn became Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.

Cockburn always sought out the most sensational cases and was astute in rearranging his diary so that he could sit in any trial likely to attract the attention of the press.^[16]

Several Prime Ministers offered to nominate Cockburn for a peerage, and he finally accepted the offer in 1864. However, Queen Victoria refused, noting that "this peerage has been more than once previously refused upon the ground of the notoriously bad moral character of the Chief Justice".^[17]

In 1875, the three English common law courts (the Queen's Bench, the

• Martin v. Mackonachie: Cockburn sitting in the Queen's Bench division granted a writ to quash
  Court of Appeal.^[19]
• The
  Tichborne Case: Cockburn presided over the civil case in which Arthur Orton attempted to establish his identity as the missing baronet Sir Roger Tichborne. This trial collapsed after 103 days, the longest civil trial on record. Cockburn then presided over the subsequent trial of Orton for perjury, a famous trial that lasted 188 days, setting a record for criminal trials, of which Cockburn CJ's summing-up occupied eighteen.^[1][20]
• R v. Hicklin: He developed the Hicklin test for obscenity.^[21]
• The Alabama claims: He also played a role in the arbitration of the Alabama claims at Geneva in 1872, in which he represented the British government. He dissented from the majority view as to British liability for the actions of British-built privateer ships. He prepared the English translation of the arbitrators' award and published a controversial dissenting opinion in which he admitted British liability for the actions of the CSS Alabama, though not on the grounds given in the award, and discounted liability for the CSS Florida and CSS Shenandoah.^[1]
• The Overend-Gurney fraud trial: the trial of the partners of Overend & Gurney, a bank that had collapsed in spectacular circumstances following precarious risks taken by the managers. In his summing up, Cockburn expressed the view that the defendants had been guilty of nothing more than "grave error".^[22]
• Woodley v. Metropolitan District Railway Co.:^[23] Woodley was set to repair a wall in a darkened railway tunnel in which trains continued to run, without warning or dedicated lookout, and with barely sufficient clearance between train and wall for the workman to make himself safe when a train passed. Woodley was seriously injured when he reached across the rail for a tool and was struck by a passing train. Cockburn CJ held that the employer was not liable, invoking the principle of volenti non-fit injuria.^[24]
• Lavinia Ryves's claim to be the daughter of Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, a claim that ultimately failed after Cockburn CJ told the jury in summing up that Ryves's evidence comprised "outrages on all probability".^[25]
• The trial of Michael Barrett for the Clerkenwell explosion.^[26]
• The trial of Boulton and Park for transvestism and "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence".^[27]
• The trial of Henry Wainwright for murder.^[28] The crime, in which Wainwright was arrested in possession of the dismembered body of his victim, was given more publicity at the time than those of Jack the Ripper.^[29]
• The Eastbourne manslaughter

Personality

In personal appearance Cockburn was of small stature with a large head, but possessed a very dignified manner. He enjoyed

Although Cockburn never married, he had one acknowledged illegitimate son and one illegitimate daughter by the unmarried Amelia (Emily) Godfrey (17 September 1818, baptised 11 October 1818 All Saints' Church, Epping), the daughter of William Daniel Leake Godfrey (1788–1868) and his wife Louisa Hannah (née Dalley, 1791–1852):[5]^[32][33][34]

1. Louisa Charlotte Cockburn (3 August 1838 Stratford, Essex baptised 16 June 1839 All Saints' Church, West Ham, Essex – Isle of Wight 25 April 1869^[3][35]), who married at Chelsea, London, on 25 June 1863^[36] to the Rev. Charles William Cavendish (Chiswick 24 September 1822 – Ryde, Isle of Wight 21 December 1890),^[37] rector of Little Casterton, Rutland, later a Catholic convert who became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and a grandson of George Cavendish, 1st Earl of Burlington, with issue:
   1. Louis Francis John Charles Raphael Cavendish (24 October 1864^[38] – 31 December 1890^[39]), who never married^[40][41][42]
2. Alexander Cockburn Dalton or Alexander Dalton (Alex) Cockburn (
   Baronet of Langton
   , which became dormant.

Cockburn died on 20 November 1880,

Bibliography

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cockburn, Sir Alexander James Edmund". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 623.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 3)
• Leigh Rayment's list of baronets – Baronetcies beginning with "C" (part 3)
• Obituaries:
  • The Times, 22 November 1880; 26 November 1880
  • Law Times, 27 November 1880, 68–9
  • Solicitors' Journal, 25 (1880–81), 76–7
• Bucknill, J. C. (1881). "The Late Lord Chief Justice of England on Lunacy". Brain. 4 (1): 1–26.
  doi:10.1093/brain/4.1.1
  .
• Diamond, B. L. (1956). "Isaac Ray and the trial of Daniel M'Naghten". American Journal of Psychiatry. 112 (8): 651–656.
  PMID 13292555
  .
• Diamond, Michael (2004). Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Anthem Press.
  ISBN 1-84331-150-X
  .
• Foulkes, N. (2010). Gentlemen and Blackguards: Gambling Mania and Plot to Steal the Derby of 1844. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. Ch.17–19.
  ISBN 978-0-297-84459-4
  .
• Hamilton, John Andrew (1887). "Cockburn, Alexander James Edmund" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Kingston, C. (1923). Famous Judges and Famous Trials. London: Stanley Paul & Co. p. Ch.9.
  ISBN 0-8377-2336-1
  .
• Lobban, M. (2004) "Cockburn, Sir Alexander James Edmund, twelfth baronet (1802–1880)",
  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 24 July 2007 (subscription or UK public library membership
  required)
• Russell, C. (1894). "Reminiscences of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge". North American Review: September.
• Veeder, Van Vechten (1900). "Sir Alexander Cockburn". Harvard Law Review. 14 (2). Harvard Law Review, Vol. 14, No. 2: 79–97.
  JSTOR 1323051
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Alexander Cockburn

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